Friday, March 18, 2011

[This was originally written on 10 March 2011, the day before the Japan earthquake and tsunami. When all that hit the fan, I forgot to post this commentary.]

I recently had the pleasure of watching Tom Shadyac’s documentary ‘I AM’ in San Rafael, California. One of the points the movie gets across is that throughout history our misconceptions about the world and cosmos we live in, however well-established, do get overturned and upgraded from time to time. Humans are capable of widening our consciousness and our perspective to include a more integral and increasingly accurate picture of the Whole. One example given in the movie is the shift from thinking the world was flat to acknowledging its sphericality; another is the shift from thinking the Sun revolves around the Earth to understanding that it is actually the Earth that revolves around the Sun.

Both of these important shifts in human perspective/awareness involved knowledge of the 360° shape and movement of the Earth and the Solar System. Regardless of how pervasive such knowledge may have been in ancient civilizations, such as the Vedic, it was effectively washed away, as if in a flood (or whatever series of catastrophic disasters or Earthly challenges) resulting in profound human ignorance and discord which reached a certain peak in the Dark Ages. The knowledge of the shape and dynamics of the Earth began to make something of a comeback throughout the Renaissance, via scientific thought, but neither science nor religion considered the 360° zodiac to be an archetypal and essential vehicle, vessel or container of THAT crucial knowledge. As such the zodiac, the original vehicle or 'Mother Ship' of 360°-based gnosis, was cast aside vigorously in Western Civilization. India and other Eastern countries may have held on to the ‘idea’ of the 12 month zodiac, but as Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet has pointed out in her work, they lost the connection between the zodiac and the Earth’s year as measured out by the Equinoxes and Solstices. Hence there are hundreds of different calendar years throughout the East … none of which correspond to the Earth’s Equinoxes and Solstices.

After watching ‘I AM’, I thought that despite all the significant advances we have made in understanding our relations and interconnections and even our 'quantum entanglement' with our environment and everything in it, people still think and act as if time is linear.

Even though we are quite clear that a year in time is marked out by the Earth’s 360° journey around the Sun, few experience or investigate the flow of their lives as a soul-full continuity that plays itself out in measurable arcs and cycles of time, in harmony with the Earth's months and years as well as with the orbits of other planets and luminaries of our solar system.

The geometries and symmetries and interrelations that constantly manifest in this 'field' or 'course' of time are not readily apparent to the human eye/mind, just as the 360° shape of the Earth is not readily apparent, nor is the Earth's orbit around the Sun. These are things we typically learn from those before us who have discovered something or remembered something real about our Self and our World. Considering that significant new revelations about the body of time, Vedic gnosis and the course of evolution have been introduced by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet over the past four decades, I do wonder how much longer it will take before more people take it upon themselves to update their assumptions and widen their perspective, awareness and consciousness of these matters. As is, our current prevailing understanding of our movement in and our place in Time is as backwards as thinking the world is flat, or thinking the Sun revolves around the Earth ... it is that off, that distorted, and that ignorant and that due for correction.

Upon examination, students can discover that the Tropical Zodiac was for the Vedic Sages, an eternal vessel or container of knowledge (sanatana dharma) about the 360° stucture of our Earth, our Solar System and our journey in time and space. This vessel, ship or bowl stands eternally (as long as the Earth exists) on the cross bows of the Earth’s Equinoxes and Solstices. It is a divine Ark, such as the Ark of Noah or Ark of Manu, that has survived all manner of Earthly catastrophes over however many precessional cycles and ages, assisting humans in the process of orienting ourselves in vast oceans of time. Our modern civilization has barely begun to scratch the surface of what this vessel of knowledge is meant to be used for.

I will soon post more about the mythologies of Noah's and Manu's Ark in relation to the zodiac. Probably after I post more on Japan's ongoing ordeal.

2 comments:

Hi Lori, This lack of awareness of the Earth as aninterdependent being with "all that is" is slowly becoming again. Thanks for such a beautifully written article, especially the sentence "Our modern civilzation has barely begun to scratch the surface of what this vessel of knowledge is meant to be used for."